Father's Day report

Just like any recent day in the Harris household, Father's Day got off to an early start. Ella woke up at 5AM to wish me a happy Father's day. As part of the special treats of the day I got to go back to bed from 6 till 8:30. Then I got a wonderful breakfast of fresh cheese pikelets.

The morning just got better with a trip to every dad's favourite store: Bunnings or as Simon calls it the "hard work shop". The highlight of Bunnings is the toy set for the kids which Mum usually heads straight for with the kids while Dad gets some quality shopping time. The main purchase for Father's Day was some vegetables to grow in the family vegetable patch.

In the afternoon we hosted some of the male cousins and their dads for a small afternoon tea.

Spring has sprung

We have emerged from blogging hibernation - it has been too cold to expose the fingers to typing up blog entries.

Here is the winter roundup on the three characters of most interest:

• Ben: Remains as stubborn as ever. i.e. still not toilet trained. He is confirmed for three days of preschool next year. We think this may be a bit of a shock to someone who has a few hours in total in the gym creche as his only exposure to group care. His speech is improving every day. The most used expression at the moment is "XXXX is annoying me". You can substitute a persons name (primarily Ella) or any object for the XXXX.
• Ella: Still waking up at 5AM. Bring on daylight saving! Starting to make more noise. Still as irritating as ever. She is also known as the Christmas child. See previous post.
  
• Simon: Simon is as garrulous as ever and now likes telling jokes and making rhymes. The jokes aren't alway funny but he's got the rhymes right. He gets very jealous of Ben but is not threatened by his little sister although he does find her annoying some times. He is very competitive especially with Ben and this can get quite tiring for his parents. He is really enjoying school and so are his parents.
  

All in all they are still as gorgeous as ever, bringing a smile to their parents and grandparents and we love them very much.

A rite of passage

We can now proudly say we have passed another rite of parenthood. Head lice hit the household about a week ago. Simon was furiously scratching his head but I couldn't see any of the critters. I put it down to the fact he was at soccer camp (Yes he occasionally does something sporty) and was wearing his hat all of the time. On Tuesday this week he was scratching his head again. I finally got him to sit still for long enough so I could check out his head. Critters were spotted.

On Wednesday morning (which luckily happened to be a day off for the parents) Sarah dashed off to the chemist and returned with something organic and a fine tooth comb.

We checked everyone out - Lizzy (aka The Craft Nanny), Michael and Ella were nit free. I am very empathetic so I had a few scratches anyway. (I am so empathetic I still have the remains of the belly I grew when Sarah was pregnant with Ella.) Lice were spotted in Simon, Ben and Sarah. The treatment consisted of rubbing the cream onto your head and then sitting with the green shower cap on your head for ten minutes. Simon was treated first. Ben needed some encouragement - 1/2 a packet of jelly beans. Once he was delirious with a sugar high he agreed to sitting for ten minutes with a green shower cap on his head. Okay maybe agreed to is stretching the truth a little bit.

Sarah had doubts about the effectiveness of the organic stuff after she discovered some living creatures still in Simon's hair post treatment, so dashed of to the chemist again for something with more chemicals in it. We had a beautiful moment of bonding as we rubbed head lice moose into each other's hair.

Everyone is clear now.

Wacky Races

The Wacky Races came to the house last weekend

'B' is for BEN

Last Thursday was Simon's news day and the letter of the week was 'B'. Simon went to school with a photo of Ben his blond brother with brown eyes.

Gina for a day

Since Simon was born our dream for our children was to have them sleep from 7 til 7 as Gina (of Contented Little Baby fame) said is quite reasonable. We thought so too. However, none of our children so far have agreed with us. Ella, however, teased us with one night of sleeping from seven til seven. And it was bliss! Alas, a teaser was all it was. Today was back to 4:35.....

what's a record mummy?

Simon, a record (as in world record) is when you do something that's never been done before.

This week Ella showed Simon what a record is when she slept through the night till 6:45am!

Last night she almost repeated this record. Although crying out at 3:40 she slept on till past 7:20!

Simon and Ben were up about 6:20 but anything past 6:00 is civilised in our world.

Looking on the bright side of life

When you have to get up before 6AM everyday there is one benefit:
You get to see the sunrise every day.

Winter has arrived

For those avid readers of this blog some important facts:

• this is post 100 of the the BLOG
  
• which is also just over a year old.

Winter has arrived in Sydney this week. The daily maximum temperature has gone below 20 degrees. The forecast for the next six days is rain and showers. We have had heavy rain and strong winds for the last two days. You would think we were living in England. A guy from work is going to Melbourne for the weekend because the weather is better down there. This is just the sort of forecast you want when the long weekend is starting and you are going to spend the next three days stuck inside with three little terrors.

The reason this post is about the weather is that not much else exciting is happening at the moment. If Sarah was writing the post it would proabably be about sleeping.

We are just settling into the winter routines of chopping wood and foraging for food in the freezer.

In a few weeks we will go to our first parent-teacher night to find out about Simon at sKool. Hopefully his spelling will be better than his Father's. We manage to get occasional bits of information out of him. For example:
Michael: Simon how was school today? What did you do?
Simon: Good, not much.

Ben remains the most stubborn child I know. I would love for him to be able to go to preschool in July. However he steadfastly refuses to use the toilet and remains in nappies. His speech is improving all of the time. Sometimes he is even understandable now. He has quite a few stock expressions:

• Mummy/Daddy you are a bully.
• It wasn't my fault - this gets used quite a lot on some days.
  
• I hate everything
  
• I hate [substitute any adult here]
  
• I get [substitue any Thoms character here] for my birthday!
  

Ella is stil trying for the most annoying child award. While being very cute she does cruise around the house looking for trouble and leaving a trail of mess behind her. As normal for a Harris child she is quite advanced for her age: The 2 year old tantrums have already started at 18 months.

The best sort of hand me downs

A few weeks ago Tony Boyd dropped off a collection of video tapes that his sons no longer watched. Madeline and Thomas the Tank Engine just aren't that interesting for teenage boys.

Tony was most impressed that Ben could name all the videos. I would be more worried that a 3 year old has watched so much TV.

Star of the week.

Last week Simon came home with the trophy for star of the week - awarded for "being a positive class member"

Well done Simon.





Ben and Ella thought it was pretty cool as well.

ParentingTip for Mothers - Number 612.

Do not let cute daughter play with expensive mobile phone - They will break it.

The Mother's Day Report

Well it didn't start with breakfast in bed. Sarah's mothers day started with me (Michael) getting up at 3:30AM to look after a sick Ella. Sarah relieved me some time around 5:30AM - (Author's note: There is some conjecture on the actul time 5:30 is a compromise to ensure marital harmony).

Simon gave Sarah a lovely gift that he had purchased at school - after Sarah gave him the money. We had made a feeble attempt to hide it in his cupboard so it could be a surprise but it had been found - Hint: Try the garage next year she doesn't ferret around the tools very often.

At 9AM I went to the gym for some much needed 'me' time.

In the afternoon we had all of the Boyds and Granny and Grandpa after for a big afternoon tea.

Ellas was the star - There is nothing cuter then a little girl with a silly hair style.

Here are some photos:

Simon at 5

inquisitive, garrulous, annoying, delightful, cuddly, sensitive, jealous of his brother, caring big brother, a great constructor.

Simon is a busy boy. He is interested in everything and exhausts his parents with his questions about everything.

Ben at 3

The second child - doesn't always get as much coverage as his brother and sister.

Here's one for you buddy

His Mother's description: twinkle in his eye, dimple in his cheek, stirrer, teaser, jealous of his little sister, polite, talkative, gorgeous

Ella at 17 months

feisty, happy, naughty, cheeky, busy, mischievous, gorgeous, exhausting.

Ella is into everything, constantly annoying her brothers and tiring out her parents. She wanders around the house looking for trouble and usually finds it.

Last week she drank some household disinfectant and prompted a call to the poisons line. It was only a teaspoon luckily.

She is still as smiley as ever and when she is happy is delightful.

Its been too long!

Well we've finally got around to doing another blog post and when I checked the date of the last post I couldn't believe it was 7th February! Time surely flies with 3 kids 5 and under.

So whats been happening?

Well the biggest thing is that Simon started school and he seems to be really enjoying it. He has a lovely teacher who seems to keep them all in line (I've seen her in action) and he has made lots of new friends.

Ben could start at the preschool if we wanted but he is resisting toilet training and we can't send him till he's fully embraced the concept. Seeing how stubborn he is, this could be a while....

Ella is now a definite third presence in the house and exhibiting the impatience of her siblings and unfortunately also their garrulousness.

More details about each child in separate blog entries to come.

Michael has been very busy at work and having to bring some work home but this is the price he pays for working 4 days a week and he doesn't mind. I haven't been as busy at work but I have been studying for a Microsoft certification exam which I just finished and I passed.

Ella still isn't sleeping so well although she started heading for six o'clock for a few mornings just to tease us then she reverted to night-time wakings and averages 4:30 at the moment. This is not conducive to a very exciting life.... Oh well we know it will improve because we've been there before. Twice.

Happy Birthday Mumma

We all love you very much and hope you managed to have a good birthday on Saturday.

Feedback from school

Simon already shows many of the characteristics of a teenager:

• he refuses to tell his parents about school
• he lies on the couch watching tv, ignoring his parents

We did manage to get some feedback from school: he likes little school better because he got to have a rest there!

Some people will do anything to get on the internet

On Saturday our friends Cristian and Megan came for lunch. Sarah mentioned we had the blog and took some photos - (none of Megan though).

Shortly afterwards we received the following e-mail:

Oh now, how disappointing. No news of your exciting visitors?? No
photos?? Tsk tsk.

Thanks for a lovely Saturday. Very relaxing time and lovely food to
boot. Seb especially enjoyed a bite-free play.

X Megan
ps are you sorry you showed us your blog yet?

Advanced for his age

Last week, we sent our first off for the big world of kindergarten. So far he has been for 3 days.

We chickened out

We take our australia day celebrations seriously in this household. We were hoping to have a BBQ for 3 days running over the Australia Day weekend. On Friday we were kindly invited next door to Megan and Brett. A great BBQ, very traditional - total segregation of men and woman. The men even ate separately from the women. I had a great time as did the boys. I don't know how much Ella and Sarah enjoyed it since we only saw them when we were going home. The only radical thing the whole afternoon was the noodle salad - cooked by a man.

On Saturday we caught up with our friend Pam from uni and her lovely quiet family of James, Emily and Thomas. The boys could learn a few things from Emily and Thomas about how to communicate without talking so loudly.

Prior to the weekend, on Wednesday we had Andrew, Louise and the girls from across the road over for warm up BBQ.


However after BBQs on Wednesday Friday and Saturday I couldn't face another steak or sausage. I had had steak and sauasage at six meals in total since I was also eating the left overs for lunch. So when Chris, Margie, Matthew and Thomas came over for dinner I caved in and we had chicken for dinner. We also had cous cous (aka North Shore rice)

Chris and Matthew checked out the latest blog entries and commented on how well written they were. We all sat down outside for a lovely dinner. The boys had a great time with their cousins. Simon remembered that the cousins liked the playstation so we had that instead of the usual computer games for the pre "goto bed activity"

Return of the lost soldier

Sarah took the boys to visit their cousins Timothy, David and Edward this morning. The boys always love going over to play with their cousins' toys especially the fantastic train set.

Anyway Simon returned with on old suitcase that looked familiar. It was mine and it contained a collection of my old toy soldiers and some old ones of theirs. Sarah said she had given it to the cousins when we were cleaning up a few years ago.

Happy Australia Day and other ramblings

Happy Australia Day to everyone out there from the Harris Family

This post was written by Michael even though the photo is of Sarah.






It is just past the middle of summer and while I was sitting outside on the new ($50) banana lounge I was think about my vital stats for a good summer.

• Number of beach visits - going pretty well this year - a lot more than we have ever done since we had kids
  
• Number of pool swims - everyone loves the pool and it is getting a lot of use. However I wouldn't mind a bit more pool time sans my pink limpet aka Ella
  
• Amount of cricket watched - not quite enough - had to watch too much "Thomas the tank engine" and the movie "cars" when we should have had the cricket on.
  
• Hammock time - not nearly enough - I am going to hang out in the hammock as soon as this post is finished
• BBQs - how much red meat can you eat over summer? We started off slowly but with the new gas BBQ this stat is going up. Stay tuned for further BBQ reports.
  

What a threat

Simon: Mumma and Daddy I am going to stay with you forever.

If only it was true

Simon has reecently developed a bit of a competitive instinct and has quite a lot of confidence in his own ability.

Some reecent quotes form his lordship:

"I think I might be quite good at soccer"

"I know a lot about dinosaurs" Dinosaurs could be swapped for a number of other topics. A good summary quote would be "I know a lot about everything"

"I am stronger than Grandpa"

The 747 has landed

After seven (amost eight) years it was time to say goodbye to the Vectra. The airconditioning had given up, there were numerous rattles and the feeling was that its time had come.

The Vectra has been replaced with a nice silver Honda Odyssey. Pa has named it the 747 based on its roomy interior, size, sleek appearance and fancy dashboard.






While the cars were being swapped over all of the child seats were taken out and were sitting in the living room. The kids decided to check out various seating options for the new car.

Ella made it to one

Ella, congratulations you have reached one. We forget that you are still so little as you chase around after your brothers trying to do whatever they are doing.

You are still the smiliest baby we know and just like the old saying, when you are good you are very very good but when you are bad..... Lately, you've been teething a lot. Or at least we hope you've been teething because thats been our excuse for your behaviour. You used to be a great eater and now you just lose patience after a few mouthfuls as if its extremely boring and there are so many other things to do. Unfortunately the way you communicate this to us is that you scream and writhe around usually flinging food in every direction except inside your mouth. You are a real Daddy's girl much to his chagrin when Mummy is allowed to float on the lilo in the pool while you hold on tight to Daddy. You like climbing over everything including any kind of table or chair. Once standing on the chair then you like to rock the chair. You have started to sleep a bit more thank goodness as the sleep torture was really wearing thin on your parents. You seem to enjoy sleeping downstairs with your brothers a lot better than upstairs in the attic.

Foodwise you have discovered a love of cheese and sand. You could eat cheese til the cows come home and the sand that bothered your big brother Simon at the beach is heaven to you.

You love getting out of the house and have a short attention span at home. You'll just wander from room to room at home trying to find out where you can create the most havoc. You especially love breaking up Ben's train track and cuddling either Ben or his precious teddy bear. Of course this drives Ben mad and we often hear "Ella's annoying me!!" and quickly have to rescue you before Ben kicks you away. Simon is a little more tolerant usually allowing you to give him a couple of hugs before he too gets fed up.

Fastest Draw in the North

Ella has tremendous reflexes and speed of movement. These two photos were taken within half a second of each other. She doesn't like wearing a hat. They don't last on her head for very long.

On a good day in the sun you can be putting her hat back on at a rate of 15 times a minute until you are exhausted and give up

We survived the first year

This post is about a month late. I was very busy at work for most of December but I am now on holiday for a week. In December we had a family birthday party for Ella. I don't remember many of the details. Granny made a very pink cake. We drank French champagne and Ella looked very cute in her new dress. Sarah even wore a pink shirt for the occasion.

Annoying instincts of Ella

When babies are born they have a number of built-in survival reflexes such as the sucking reflex and moro reflex. As they develop towards their first birthday a number of other reflex actions start to make an appearance. The purpose of these reflexes is not clear but it may be to test their parents patience. Ella has been showing the following reflexes:
- change table turnover -- must turn over when parent is trying to change nappy
- reject the last spoon of food --if there's one mouthful left must not eat it
- bed side drawer attraction -- must empty out contents of bedside drawer messily

Brownian motion simulator

that is what ben is when he is trying to get back to sleep at 4 in the morning in our bed!

Lost in translation

Ben has started to talk a lot more. The only problem is that you don't always know what he is saying. Here are some translations:
Yar = yoghurt
den = devon
shard = sandwich
shaw = strawberries
tom = thomas
an = twister (the game)
Sar = Simon

History Repeats

Ben is now happily sleeping in his new bed and no longer asks to get into his cot. He has also dispensed with the sleeping bag and he loves covering himself with his doona. He has only fallen out of bed once when we had the bed guard wrongly positioned.

His elder brother has always gone to bed with a cast of thousands: books, animals, toys and toy catalogues. Well history is repeating. The other day when I took Ben to bed for his lunchtime sleep we went with: Teddy bear, drink, rubber frog, rubber lizard, plastic cow and Thomas the tank engine.

The attack of the cute baby.

If you blow up the photo you can see the reds of her eyes.

Champagne tastes of the Harris Boys

Favourite foods of the Harris boys:
-Bananas strawberries avocados grapes and salmon

Family get together and Pram transfer

Two Sunday's ago we had a Harris afternoon tea, with Mark, Leanne, Megan, Isa, Gareth and Kayla. Granny and Leanne supplied the food - thanks for the dips and cakes. With a new baby on the way for Leanne and Mark it was a good chance to offload some unused baby stuff. Leanne has kindly taken the old pram and bassinet. We are slowly clearing out the house. 2 cots, 1 change table, 1 pram and 3 kids still to go.

The way it used to be.

It was a hot sunny day on Saturday and the pool looked inviting, even if the water was slighty cold. I thought about how five years ago we would have been lying on our pool lounges under the umbrella having breakfast or morning tea and reading the newspaper. We would be thinking about what movie to see in the afternoon and where we were going for dinner.

Oh well, now we have three beautiful children who have us up from 5:30am. We have done the food shopping by 9am. Friends have dropped in for a swim by 11am. By 12am we are think about packing them all off for a nap and having one ourselves.

P.S. The pool lounges were broken a couple of years ago, the sun hardens the plastic and makes it brittle. So we don't have anywhere to lie down and read the paper anymore anyway.

My wife the card shark

Last Friday night we hosted the regular work poker night. Every few months my workmates get together at someone's house to play poker and sledge each other. For the second time they came along to the Harris household. Most of them are single and don't really cook for themselves so I cooked dinner for a few of them. For one it was his first home cooked meal for months. Even though he lives at home - oh the life of a single person.

Anyway when we play at our house, Sarah also plays. For the second time Sarah won. All of the guys think she is a card shark. Sarah often asks questions during the game about which hands beat which other hands. The truth is that she really doesn't know.

Anyway the hustler's winnings paid for a new outdoor umbrella. Lets see if she manages to clean up at her work poker night. Next year I might put her on the professional poker tour.

Happy Brithday Granny

Happy Birthday Granny,

We all hope you had a great day, even if you didn't see us today.

Congratulations Rob

On the weekend we went to a picnic organised by one on of Michael's cousin's. While we were there, we were told the exciting news that an old friend that we don't see as much as we used to anymore, Rob, has got engaged to the lovely Gabi.

Congratulations Rob and Gabi.

Granny informs me that Rob is a big fan of the this blog.

Nightmare on Cobar St

Ella has started to crawl!. She is now preparing to terrorise/annoy her brothers.

I know we have been through this before. We were overseas in an apartment when Simon started to crawl, there wasn't a lot of chance for him to get into trouble. Ben did get up to more mischief. However now we are home and we have a huge accumulation of toys for Ella to get into. Constant vigilance is required.

The worst thing about crawling is that they won't sit still on the change table and keep on rolling over. It has often been a nightmare changing Ben's nappy. Ella is easily the most active of the children (obviously taking after her father). She already kicks and screams when you are dressing her. Yesterday when Ella was put on the change table, in a flash she was on her stomach trying to launch herself head first over the side. Five minutes later after a good work out she was finally changed.

A moment of madness

Sometimes the mind of a toddler works in mysterious ways. All logic can go out the window when you are desperate to prove a point.

Scene: Michael going upstairs to fetch Ella.

Sarah: Ben, do you want to watch ABC kids?

Ben: No! (wailing at the bottom of the stairs) I want Daddy.

A father wins over TV, not many times that will happen in life.

Breaking news -- first sleep in for weeks

Last night certain countermeasures were taken to head off the 4:30am battle: Ben was put in his roomier sleeping bag, the blinds were drawn more tightly as Sarah noticed a glimmer of light entering at 4:40 the other morning, and Ben's doona was returned to the cot to make sure he was extra warm. And we got a result! Ben slept till 5:55. Mind you Ella woke at 5am but she stayed chatting away in her cot for about 20 minutes.

Hopefully this is not a mere aberration and Ben will continue to sleep more. Parents can only hope.

Sleep Wars continued

Warning: This post contains potentially contentious political information.

There have been recent news articles about the legality of the CIA's use of torture when interrogating prisoners as part of the war on terror. One of the torture methods being discussed is sleep deprivation.

This household has first hand experience in 'sleep torture'. The names of three members of the axis of evil are well known: Simon, Ben and Ella. The coalition of the exhausted -- Sarah and Michael -- have been waging a long war for a sleep past 6:00am.

After a long campaign Simon has finally been subdued and now regularly sleeps past 6:30. The junior member of the trio, Ella, remains a mystery but now sleeps in until 5:30am on a good day. This brings us to Ben. Sleep deprivation is the main tactic/weapon being used by both parties in this bitter struggle. Ben has also brought a fair degree of screaming and shouting to the battle.

For the last few weeks Ben has been waking up between 4:30 -- 5:30am, most commonly at 4:30am. At first a number of peaceful solutions were suggested by the concerned UG (United Grandparents ) including cohabitation with his brother and putting him into a big bed. None of these had any impact.

As exhausted parents we have decided to fight fire with fire. Ben used to sleep for at least 2 hours each afternoon -- we needed the break as well. However, in the end we have been limiting Ben's sleep to 1 hour a day and drugging him up (he does have a cough) at night. There has also been a concerted effort to run him ragged in the afternoon. Results so far -- exhausted child. He fell asleep on the couch at 11:40am the other morning. And exhausted parents. He still wakes up before 5am. It means we need to go to bed around 9am. Not much good for doing anything at night.

Our next great hope -- Daylight Savings. At least it will be 5:30am instead of 4:30am

nine months and still gorgeous

Yes she is gorgeous. She is wearing a dress that her grandmother and aunty gave her.

Ella dropping a bottle

We have finally stopped giving Ella her night time bottle and she is managing to mostly sleep till the next morning without it. Now we just have to get Ben to stop waking up at 4-4:30.......

So well trained - Whose the boss

Script 1:
Ben shouting at Simon:

Ben: Simon move away.

Simon:You're not the boss of me.

Ben: No Daddy is

Script 2:
Sarah talking to Ben:

Sarah: You are not the boss, I am

Ben: No Daddy boss!

Spring has sprung

The weather has been gorgeous the last few days and we are enjoying the warmer weather and blue Sydney skies. This has followed day after day of rain which was driving parents of small children stir crazy as they had to stay indoors with their little darlings.

Normal blogging will return shortly

As you would have noticed the frequency of update on this blog has reduced. Hopefully this will be rectified shortly.
Ben and Ella have been waking up early.
Sarah and Michael have been very busy at work.
Michael has been sick with a cold.

The above was written a month ago. Its been a busy month!